Wednesday, August 30, 2006

The Peculiarities of the Elmostafa Case

The longer the Duke lacrosse case proceeds, the more disturbing signs emerge. Certainly Sgt. Mark Gottlieb's typed, four-months-after-the-fact notes, which Stuart Taylor denounced as "transparently contrived" and "unworthy of belief." But yesterday's determination that cab driver Moezeldin Elmostafa was not guilty of a 2003 misdemeanor charge (aiding a shoplifter to whom he gave a cab ride after her crime) also does little to increase confidence in Mike Nifong's ethical core.

There were three disturbing items that emerged from yesterday's court session, two involving discovery file material not previously known:

1.) The existence of Elmostafa's undelivered warrant (one of thousands in Durham County) was discovered not by the Durham Police, but by Nifong's case investigator, Linwood Wilson. Wilson was last heard from interrupting a press conference by defense attorney Joseph Cheshire to claim that nothing in the 1800 pages of the discovery file suggested that the accuser had ever told differing stories about her alleged attack, only to be humiliated the next day when Cheshire released a police report from the file (that Wilson claimed to have read) in which the accuser asserted that five people raped her.

Regarding Elmostafa, Wilson claimed that the warrant's discovery was routine, the sort of check he does on every witness; "it has nothing to do with putting any kind of pressure on him," said the investigator. But Nifong's office was blindsided by revelations that the accuser had previously filed a charge that she was gang-raped by three men.

Is Nifong's investigator seriously claiming that he does a more thorough background check on potential alibi witnesses for the defense than for his office's own chief witness?

2.) Nifong's office has repeatedly denied any connection between the arrest and the lacrosse case. Yet the notes of Inv. B.W. Himan revealed in court yesterday showed that "Mr. Nifong wanted to know when we picked [Elmostafa] up." This note enhances the credibility of Elmostafa's claim that when Inv. R.D. Clayton picked him up, "The detective asked if I had anything new to say about the lacrosse case. When I said no, they took me to the magistrate."

Is Nifong's office seriously claiming that the district attorney wants to be informed each and every time Durham police serve a 2.5-year-old misdemeanor warrant?

3.) The N&O reports that "all day long, two investigators on the lacrosse case, Benjamin Himan and R.D. Clayton, sat in the courtroom." Elmostafa's lawyer asked the obvious question: "Why are they here? Supposedly they know zero about Hecht's, so why are they here?"

Clayton's pose is apt. In many ways, Durham’s legal system has reverted to a mirror image of what existed in the South 50 years ago, when defendants were halfway to conviction based on the color of their skin. Indeed, the closest historical parallel to Nifong’s behavior over the past five months comes from the 1950s and early 1960s, when district attorneys in the Deep South routinely filed specious charges against civil rights activists. Facts were irrelevant; everyone knew the accused were innocent. These cases politically aided the prosecutors, who, like Nifong, blatantly violated procedures just to get to court. Then, however, the national legal community, academics, and the media rallied against the injustices. Now, it seems, all three have different priorities.

7 comments:

Anonymous
said...

K.C.,

Good points on this one. If Nifong had Himan and Wilson sit in court all day over a misdemeanor, then we know that everything the DA's office is saying is a lie, since they insist this had NOTHING to do with the lacrosse case.

Taylor's point that Gottlieb has a history of Dookie-hating is more important than one might first suspect. From the start, the language used by Nifong and the Durham police has been to personally denounce Duke athletes, calling them "hooligans" and the like.

(By the way, "hooligans" was the favorite term used by the commissars of the former U.S.S.R. to attack whomever they did not like. Glad to see that the Durham Police Department has been breeding Bolsheviks.)

Can someone with legal knowledge please answer why the federal authorities have not been asked or in actuality intervened in this case? It is quite obvious that the Nifong and the Durham police have seriously overstepped their bounds. What is one to do in a situation like this in the year 2006? Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

I wouldn't assume that the Feds are unaware of what is occurring here. But in a case of this sort they would be the last to act -- waiting to see whether the North Carolina court system, the NC Bar, and the Durham electorate are able to provide justice and accountability.

This guy should be barred from everworking in the law field! It's a shame he has put his politicalpower over the right of innocent people, from day 1, this whole thing was sham! Nifong should be put in jail....

I Challange you all to visit the "bookstore" on Guess road in Durham NC. Linwood frequents there a lot- and it AINT buisness. Yes, it's one of those types of "Adult" buisness. Linwood has been going there for years. I wonder what his Southern Gospel Quarter that he sings in, would think of if they saw him there.

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I am from Higgins Beach, in Scarborough, Maine, six miles south of Portland. After spending five years as track announcer at Scarborough Downs, I left to study fulltime in graduate school, where my advisor was Akira Iriye. I have a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard, and an M.A. from the University of Chicago. At Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, I teach classes in 20th century US political, constitutional, and diplomatic history; in 2007-8, I was Fulbright Distinguished Chair for the Humanities at Tel Aviv University.

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"From the Scottsboro Boys to Clarence Gideon, some of the most memorable legal narratives have been tales of the wrongly accused. Now “Until Proven Innocent,” a new book about the false allegations of rape against three Duke lacrosse players, can join these galvanizing cautionary tales . . , Taylor and Johnson have made a gripping contribution to the literature of the wrongly accused. They remind us of the importance of constitutional checks on prosecutorial abuse. And they emphasize the lesson that Duke callously advised its own students to ignore: if you’re unjustly suspected of any crime, immediately call the best lawyer you can afford."--Jeffrey Rosen, New York Times Book Review